so its been a nuts week around here. slowly but surely the populace of south east texas moved into a subdued mass panic mode as the path of hurricane rita moved towards galveston, and in turn houston.

it really was a unique experience, i dont think i've ever lived through anything like it. just the fact that a couple of million people tried to (quickly) evacuate, and failed utterly proved to me once and for all that the residents of any major city in the US would be absolutely screwed if any sudden calamity occured. the bottom line is that no city today is designed to allow a massive percentage of its population to quickly leave. Houston has 3 major highways ending "inland" and countless back roads and rural highways, and when i tried to leave on Thursday morning (09/22/05), 2 days before the storm was projected to hit, it was an absolute cluster.

whats more amazing (to me) about this whole scenario is that everyone recognizes that, with our current technology base, we're totally powerless to do anything about it. the most amusing media moment for me was seeing a spokesperson for the city on the news stating - is it reasonable to build 20 lane highways for once in 20 year events? well, no, its not! hearing this, my thought was - yep, pretty much wed all be screwed if there was a major terrorist (lets say chemical) attack tomorrow.

and of course all of this happens on the one weekend that i'd planned a vacation around for austin city limits. As mentioned I ended up trying to bug out of town on Thursday. I planned a "rural route" to avoid the major highways. after a couple of hours - and the recognition that it was absolutely pointless to sit in traffic that was moving at less then 1mph - i turned around and came home.

not to be deterred I called up Southwest and got the last available ticket to Dallas, scheduled to depart the next morning, with a connecting flight onto to Austin. come what may, i was going to get myself to Austin for this show.

Arriving at the airport the next morning at 5am, several hours before my flight, I saw a full, bustling airport of people ready to get the hell out of dodge.



come to find out, Southwest had ended up zeroing out all of their flights. in other words, every flight that morning had availability. good news for me as it allowed me to cancel my flight to dallas, and get directly on one to Austin. I was now going to arrive well ahead of schedule, and maybe even be able to get a few hours of sleep!!!



the first day in Austin ended up being good times with a serious dash of misadventure. i ended up being awake for over 22hours and the whole thing ended up feeling like a day out of sitcom with a dozen locations -

home
the deserted highway to the airport, like something out of a horror movie
houston airport
airplane and flight over texas
austin airport
hotel bedroom
lunch in south austin
driving to acl,
hiking through some backwoods trail to get to the park,
the SHOW!
Mates of State
Thievery Corporation
Keane
hiking back through the woods (in the pitch black) trying to get back to the car.
getting lost in the woods with a bordering-on-hysterical girl
the moment we found the car!
my friends parents (mansion) in the Austin hills were we stayed
downtown austin drinking at bar after bar
late night pizza at same street restaurant where they blast death metal while serving you
passed our in the car on the drive back to the house
BED

yea it was a fairly eventful day, and the next two were even better!


okay this the guy on the left is an Austin regular. Pink panties are his thing.

the chick on the right was some really really drunk girl at the Aquarium. See the lovely looking guava looking drink in front of her? thats her puke - keep drinking kids!